What to Do If Your or Your Future Spouse’s Family Disapprove of Your Marriage

Do both the bride and groom's families approve of the marriage? If not, who disapproves and for what reason? After all this discussion on your approval of the family, let us turn the problem around. What if the families do not approve you?

First, you should try to know as accurately as possible the attitudes of both families toward the proposed marriage; not that all will agree. Dad approves heartily. Mom isn't so sure. Uncle Jeff approves. Aunt Kate is strongly opposed. Younger sister Sally is just simply thrilled.

The typical problems arise when there is strong opposition from either set of parents. According to our American mythology, strongly supported from Hollywood, parents who oppose a marriage are probably unreasonable ogres, trying to prevent the happiness of their children for at least stupid, if not selfish reasons. Yet many times, parents interfere to prevent marriages which are basically unsound and undesirable. Parents are not always skillful in their efforts to prevent such unions. Often their serious concern has come about twenty years too late. But many, many times they have been correct in their judgments, as their children have later gratefully acknowledged. If either family strongly opposes the marriage, then, do not assume that they are necessarily wrong. Instead, listen to what they have to say, and give the whole matter more serious consideration.

How can you tell whether the objections raised by the families are valid?
Here are some suggestions which may help you spot both the valid and the unsound objections:

• Is the objection to this particular marriage, or to every prospective marriage?
Some parents are unwilling to let go of their children. Some mothers discourage every suitor. Sometimes they do so by openly insulting them. Sometimes they act more cleverly by appearing to rush them into matrimony. If such measures fail, the parent may "get sick" and beg the child to postpone the marriage until after recovery or death. Recovery usually takes place quickly after the prospective marriage has been broken up.

• Do the parents object because they have a candidate of their own?
Ruth Brown, a girl of twenty, became engaged to a nice boy of twenty-two. Her father, a man of some wealth, insisted that she marry his business partner, a man of forty-five, in order to keep the business in the family. Another man, disappointed in love himself, insisted later that his son marry the daughter of the woman whom he had loved. Parents may properly hope for, or even encourage a certain choice. But when there is strong insistence upon some particular one, the motives of the parents are open to suspicion.

The kind of objections raised, and the kind of persons approved are the best indication of the validity of parental objections. While social class should be carefully considered, marriages can often safely cut across class lines. Mrs. S. was furious with her daughter because the young man to whom she had become engaged lacked "family" and wealth, although otherwise he was fine and desirable. She suggested as acceptable to her several notorious rogues who "at least come from the right families." Such choices clearly indicated that she was interested, not in her daughter nor in the success of the marriage, but in her own social position.

What are valid bases of objection? If the children are under twenty, the parents have at least some semblance of right to object to any marriage on the ground of immaturity. If this objection persists too long, it is open to suspicion. If the social backgrounds and religious differences are marked, parents may object properly on the basis of suitability. Character and personality defects also are bases for valid objections.

What should the couple do if either set of parents objects? If they really are too young, they can wait. Otherwise they should go over the whole situation again carefully. In this they will do better if they have the aid of a good counselor. For he not only will be presumably better informed on some points than the parents, but less likely to be biased. But the final decision must be theirs.

Finally, before you feel too resentful or even impatient, try to look at yourself from the standpoint of your parents. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company estimates that if your family has an income of $2,500 a year, it cost them about $10,000 to raise you until you were eighteen. Since this estimation is based upon the 1935-36 price level, it would be correspondingly higher today. If you had spent some $20,000 over a period of some twenty years in building something, and at a great cost in effort and worry as well as money, wouldn't you feel that you had a right to some say about what happened to it? Your parents have a tremendous investment in you both; in love and concern as well as in more material things. Their ideas of what is best for you may seem, or actually may be wrong. But that they should have a vital concern and express this concern, is both inevitable and proper. True parenthood requires that you not only be allowed, but encouraged to be a person in your own right. But intelligence as well as ethics requires that you give full consideration to all legitimate interests and concerns of your parents.

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